


Faith falls hard on our shoulders but legends never die

by Madalena



Series: Healing in the Key of Ruelle [8]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Camille Belcourt (mentioned) - Freeform, Episode: s02e12 You Are Not Your Own, Healing, M/M, Talk About Suicide Attempts, The Accords (Shadowhunter Chronicles)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 11:17:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11312277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madalena/pseuds/Madalena
Summary: Magnus and Alec discuss what took Magnus to the ledge of Blackfriars Bridge.----Part of a series of interconnected drabbles (and not-so-drabbles) focusing on life after 2x12, titled with lines from Ruelle songs, because her music is the most perfect music for Shadowhunters, and Malec in particular.





	Faith falls hard on our shoulders but legends never die

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Lots of talk about attempted suicide. If you are having suicidal thoughts yourself, please talk to someone! You're not alone and someone can help you.

After finally finishing his coffee, Magnus pushed the mug away and sighed.

“What is it?” Alec asked.

“Just thinking. About the next memory.”

“Magnus, if you’re not ready yet, you don’t need to…”

Magnus sighed again, more heavily this time. “No, I do need to. But this one is… different. It isn’t visceral in the same way as the others. It is more recent, yet still so distant. And I… I’m not sure if you…”

“You can tell me.”

Magnus looked up at Alec and ran his thumb over the knuckles of Alec’s hand in his. “I know I can tell you. But this one… it isn’t going to be just me talking. I… I know you didn’t want to talk about it before. I didn’t either. But we’re going to have to talk about it now.”

“Before? Before what?”

“Before everything happened with the Soul Sword and Valentine. At Max’s rune ceremony party. Where you almost killed yourself.”

Alec looked down at their joined hands. “That seems like such a long time ago now.”

“It does.”

“But why do we have to talk about that? I thought talking this out was about you and your memories, not me. This isn’t about me.”

“But it is. Remember what I said that morning. I’ve been there myself.”

“And this is the memory that comes to your nightmares?”

Magnus nodded. “Not alone. Some of it is spliced in with that night on my rooftop terrace. How if I’d been just a second later…”

“But you saved me. _You saved me._ ”

“I did.” Magnus took a deep breath. “And you need to know who saved me.”

“It was Camille, wasn’t it?”

Magnus inhaled sharply. “How did you know that?”

Alec shrugged. “Just a guess. I know she meant a lot to you, once. But from what I’ve seen of her, I also know that she plays with people’s hearts and doesn’t give her own away. So if it’s still hard for you to deal with her, and if it was hard for you to give her to the Clave… there had to be a deeper reason for it. Like her saving your life.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“So how did it happen? What took you there?”

“I was living in London. 1870s. I… a time comes in every warlock’s life… well, probably more often than just once, but this is the only time it has happened for me… when you start to feel the weight of immortality. When you think of everything you’ve seen, and when you think about everything that is still ahead in the world, which you will most likely be around for. It is terrifying. I… I don’t know what it is like to be mortal, but when you know that there’s a limit on life, I imagine at least, there’s an urgency, a need to do things, because who knows if you’ll survive the next night. You know you have an expiry date.”

“You’re immortal, not invincible. You can still die. We all have an expiry date. You just don’t have a pre-defined one.”

“I suppose that’s true. But if you stay out of trouble, then it is easier to forget that. And I did stay out of trouble for a long time.”

“You don’t really seem like someone who stays out of trouble.”

Magnus ran his thumb over the rim of his empty coffee mug. “Depends on the type of trouble. I successfully avoided both Shadowhunter business and Downworld politics until the 19th century. I was a very different person before that.”

“And since then?”

“Since then? I started to care. Form attachments. I didn’t travel and move around as much I had before. I stayed in London, first, and then when London became too painful, I came to New York. Then after I became the High Warlock of Brooklyn… it isn’t just a title you know. It comes with responsibilities.”

“So Camille, and the… that night…”

“Immortality began to weigh on me. As did the sense of responsibility. It was not long before the first Accords were signed. I’d already been negotiating between Shadowhunters and Downworlders for decades, I was beginning to despair that anything would ever come of it. I tried, I _had_ been trying for so long, and I was starting to lose hope that there could ever be any Accords, any peace within the Shadow World. The Shadowhunters just weren’t listening that day, we were going around in the same circles we’d been going around for years. And I started to wonder why I was even bothering. But it had consumed me so much that I didn’t know what I would be without that fight. So when I thought that all hope was lost… I was lost too. And so on that stormy night… Camille found me on the ledge of Blackfriars Bridge.”

“But you did so much. Even if it took awhile for the Shadowhunters to come around, you did. I’ve read the stories. The minutes of those meetings. You were incredible. I know there were a number of different Downworld representatives, but most of them came and went. But you stayed. You always stayed. Because you knew it was something worth fighting for.”

“Ultimately, it was that sense of responsibility that Camille appealed to to get me off that ledge. She may not have loved me the way I wanted her to, the way I loved her… but she knew that I was needed for peace to be possible. So even if she couldn’t be what I wanted her to be for me… she still provided what I needed in that moment. And I’ll always be grateful to her for that.”

“Then I’m grateful to her too.”

Magnus looked at Alec with a half-smile. “Thanks. I know that couldn’t have been easy.”

“It’s not hard. She saved you. And I love you. And you saved me. In more ways than one. So being grateful to her for that is the easiest thing in the world.”

“Still. After all she’s done recently… knowing what she’s done in the past doesn’t changed the present. But enough about Camille. Back to what took me to that ledge… and you. Because I think the reasons are somewhat similar, am I right?”

Alec sighed. “Well, it was the spell that took me there. But… I understand, I guess. The fears within me… that I’m a disappointment, that I’ll never be good enough, no matter what I do. That even no matter what I try to do to do right, something ends up going wrong. I… after yesterday, those feelings are back again, I’m not going to lie.”

Magnus rested a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “I’d be more surprised if they weren’t. These days haven’t been easy on either of us. But you know what helped me? After Camille talked me off that ledge? It might help you now too.”

“What is that?”

“You have to be honest with yourself and live your own truth. If you mince words, if you do anything because you feel you’re supposed to do it, not because you think it is right… it isn’t right at all. It was when I started speaking more frankly that people finally started to listen to me rather than talking in circles. I’d never put much stock in what other people thought of me, but when I really started to _live_ that, my whole world changed. I didn’t let someone else be my moral compass. I was my own, and by doing that I was finally at peace with myself.”

Alec let out a shaky breath. “Yeah… that’s what I’ve been learning over the past few months. I used to look at the Law as this immutable _thing_ … something that if I didn’t follow it, I was a bad person, I was a terrible Shadowhunter… but it isn’t that simple. For a long time I let Izzy and Jace keep breaking the rules, but still held myself to those standards. But I knew that Izzy and Jace weren’t bad people, or bad Shadowhunters. So why was I thinking that I was?”

Magnus nodded. “You’ve come a long way since we first met. I’m proud of you.”

“Even after…?”

“Even after the events of the past few days? Yes. You made some big mistakes. But you’re here now, working to fix them. And I know it will take time for you to make and implement your own truth. You’ll get there. Just keep going forward.”

“With you?”

“With me. We’re in this together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from “Live Like Legends” by Ruelle.


End file.
